


'You Could At Least Recognise Me'

by PerishTwice



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Flashback, One Shot, Stand Off, Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 01:46:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9298790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerishTwice/pseuds/PerishTwice
Summary: I was severely disappointed with the lack of explanation for this line so I wrote my own.At first, Bucky sees her as a threat. What other reason could a mysterious woman have for tracking him down? What could she possibly want from him?





	

  'We're in position.'

  With these words Natasha pushed away the last of her misgivings. She snuck a glance around the corner. She couldn't see his face from here, but she didn’t need that to know exactly what was happening. He was like a machine. Precise blows followed one after the other without the slightest hesitation, as if he were following a program. Which, of course, he was.  

  Natasha felt Tony's pulse push her back a pace, and for a fraction of a second she entertained the naïve thought that she wouldn't be needed. She looked back just in time to see Bucky fire a gun point blank at Tony's face.

  She nodded at Sharon and the two of them rounded the corner, headed straight for him. Natasha forced her mind to shut off, allowing her body to slip into the familiar pattern of attack.

  Then he smashed her down on the table and for the first time she could see his face clearly. She stared into it as the metal fingers closed around her throat, searching for anything to betray that he was still in there. His eyes were blank as they bored into hers. It hurt. She knew she couldn't expect the mere sight of her to end this, but she couldn’t help hoping to find some proof that he _was_ seeing her, that he knew her. There was nothing. No remnant of her Bucky.

  Maybe it was the lack of oxygen slowing her brain, but Natasha felt an overwhelming desire to get through to him. She felt she could, if he would just… if he…

  'You could at least recognise me,' she choked out, feeling the words burn against her throat.

  It was nowhere near the pain of seeing his face remain utterly unchanged.

* * *

  The second Bucky stepped into his apartment he knew something was wrong. He felt his muscles tensing, preparing to fight. His eyes automatically began a sweep of the room.

  She wasn't hard to find. The woman stepped forwards into the centre of the room, deliberately placing herself in his sightline. Her hands were raised in front of her, a slight smirk playing across her mouth. She seemed relaxed. Bucky didn't share the sentiment.

  'There's no need to worry,' she said. 'I'm not here to hurt you.'

  Bucky backed away from her, not stopping until he felt the reassuring pressure of the wall against him. He kept his eyes fixed on her the whole time, alert to any warning of attack. There was nothing immediately obvious; she made no move to follow him and kept her hands in his sight. It didn’t put him at ease. The most likely reason for an unknown woman to break into his apartment was attack. The others weren’t much better.

  'My name is Natasha Romanoff,' she said. She looked to him and paused, as if expecting a reply. The silence stretched on slightly too long, but Bucky wasn’t prepared to give her anything just yet. If not attack, she could be here for information. She could be here for anything, and so far he had received no indication of what it might be. He was seriously at a disadvantage.

  'I'm not your enemy, Bucky,' she eventually continued. Was he imagining the slight sigh behind her words?

  He didn't ask how she knew his name. You don't track down someone in hiding unless you know exactly who they are. He scanned her quickly, trying to glean any information he could from her body language. Still no signs of imminent threat – at least none that Bucky could spot. That she was highly trained was evident from the way she held herself, and the fact that she was even here. Bucky knew how difficult it must have been for her to find him, because he knew how much trouble he'd gone to in hiding himself. A formidable enemy, then. Stronger than him? He couldn’t tell for sure.  

  She seemed to be waiting for him. Bucky stood in silence, not daring to move his eyes from her for a second. He flicked them up and down her body, constantly alert for any movement, any tiny betrayal of her intentions. Every time he returned to her face she was watching him. She kept her eyes fixed on his. Natasha wasn’t scanning his body, wasn’t checking for signs of attack or assessing him as a threat. Because she was telling the truth, and had no intention of fighting him? Or because she knew she would win?

  Bucky blinked, and realised that the silence had stretched on far longer than he had anticipated. He knew that Natasha had no intention of speaking first. He knew that, he realised, because he hadn’t looked away from her eyes for a while now.

  He weighed up the risks of speaking. It could give her information, power over him, true, but then she clearly already had some knowledge of him, whereas he had nothing on her. Her statue-like posture wasn’t giving anything away, so it seemed Bucky’s only hope of deciphering her was to get her to talk.   

  'It would be more reassuring to hear that you're a friend,' he ventured, feeling his pulse spike as he heard his own words out loud.

  'I don't want to lie to you,' Natasha answered. Her eyes narrowed as she stared him down, the most movement he’d seen from her during their little stand-off. 'And I know you're not stupid enough to consider anyone who isn't an enemy a friend.' It almost sounded like she was disappointed in him.

  So apparently talking worked. ‘Then what are you, specifically?’

  ‘That really depends, Bucky.'

  'Is that a threat?' His metal fingers started to twitch by his side.

  'No, no threats. I'm not going to hurt you.' In fairness, she was doing everything she could to promote that image. He still couldn’t find anything to trigger a warning. Bucky was almost starting to believe that she wasn’t here to fight. Almost, because of course that could be exactly what she wanted.

  ‘Then what are you going to do?’

  His words hung in the air for a moment as he watched Natasha construct her answer. Her lips parted a few moments before the sound made its way through.

  ‘Talk to you.’ She sounded... not quite hesitant, but definitely reserved. There was something she was keeping back.

  Bucky straightened up his body by a fraction, pulling a hair's breadth away from the wall. Preparing. Something was wrong, just slightly off in Natasha’s delivery. He didn’t like it.

  He saw her see him move. Worry flashed in her eyes, but her body didn’t back it up the way it would have if she were afraid of a fight. This was something else.

  ‘I want to help,’ she said quickly. She seemed sincere. Of course, Bucky wasn’t given to totally trusting appearances. And he hadn't missed the important omission.

  'Who?'

  'I'm sorry?'

  'Who do you want to help?'

  Her mouth opened and then froze, her lips hovering slightly apart. Her eyes flicked down, away from Bucky’s, and he felt the movement hum through his body. He angled slightly forward, bringing himself closer to her without leaving his defensive position. Because, although he was far from considering himself in control of the situation, he’d somehow managed to force a crack in Natasha’s carefully controlled delivery. And now maybe he could prise it open and break through to the truth.

  A shaky breath blew out through Natasha’s still-parted lips, and then she carefully brought them back together. A surrender. Slowly, she brought her eyes back up to meet his. Her gaze admitted that she was absolutely aware of what had just happened. But it did not show defeat. Instead, she smiled a challenge.

  Now that he had the power, what was he going to do with it?

  Bucky briefly considered asking her to leave, but he doubted she would comply. It would be a waste of his tenuous position. It would swing control straight back to her. And he didn’t want her to go.

  That last thought slipped its way into his reasoning, and Bucky couldn’t tell where it came from. He could only tell that it was true, and if anything that was more worrying.

  Pushing away this feeling he couldn’t quite understand and definitely didn’t want to investigate, he tried to choose which of Natasha’s many mysteries to question. Afraid of losing the chance to get anything at all out of her if he waited too long, he settled on the simplest.

  ‘Tell me who you are,’ he said, vaguely hopeful that phrasing it like a command might make him sound more sure of himself. Of course, he didn’t really expect that to work on Natasha.

  He could see her thinking, weighing up just how little she could say and still satisfy him.

  'I'm a friend of Steve Rogers.'

  The memories burst through like they sometimes did, all at once and far too overwhelming to make sense of. Layers and layers of the same face, laughing, troubled, angry. Years of him.

  Bucky heard his own laboured breathing loud in his ears, then felt his hands pressed to his temples. He prised his eyelids apart and straightened up to see Natasha staring at him. Her expression cleared the second she realised he was watching, and Bucky’s brain was too dazzled to hold on to it. But he couldn’t shake the impression that there had been something strange about it. Something in her reaction didn’t quite fit the situation. It was too... invested.

  'You remember him.' It wasn't exactly intoned as a question, but Bucky nodded anyway. 'That's good.' Something in her voice twinged a sense of familiarity in his chest. As he tried to place the feeling, he realised that Natasha had just had the perfect opportunity to attack and, as far as he could tell, hadn’t moved an inch. He stopped just short of admitting to himself that he no longer saw her as a threat. Bucky tried to fight the sense of trust he felt building inside him. He had no real evidence that she was trustworthy.

  Except his instincts.

  He hurriedly retraced the few steps he’d taken towards her during his fit; he wanted to keep as much distance between them as possible. Because he didn't trust her. And because he didn't entirely trust himself around her.

  Bucky pulled his mind back. Focus on the questions. Find out what she's doing here.

  ‘Did –’ He swallowed the name before it could re-open the floodgates. ‘Did he send you?’

  ‘No.’ There was a story under that no. Bucky recognised this with an intuitive ease, the same way he could tell she knew he’d noticed. Now he waited, knowing that at this moment silence was a better prompt than any words.

  ‘In fact, he'd probably never forgive me if he found out I was here.’ The words came out in a rush, accompanied by a wheeze that didn't quite make it all the way to a laugh.

  ‘Then why are you?’ Bucky’s pulse quickened at the prospect of unlocking a part of Natasha’s mystery. Of understanding her.

  Natasha’s brow was furrowed, her eyes focused off into the middle distance as if she was hoping that the answer might reveal itself there.

  ‘Steve wants to find you.’ Each word was drawn out of her individually, but it didn’t feel like she wanted to conceal the truth from him. She just wasn’t sure how best to reveal it. ‘He wants his Bucky back.’

  Her words resonated somewhere within him, but it was nowhere near as immediate as the memories she’d unlocked before. It was more like an echo, a secondary feeling.

  Natasha was staring intently at him, and Bucky shifted uncomfortably under her gaze. He felt like he was being studied, although he had no idea what Natasha could be searching for.

  After a few more excruciating seconds she dropped her gaze. Bucky didn't know if that meant she'd found what she was looking for or not.

  ‘And you don't want that?’

  ‘I want to know whether it's possible.’ There was something in her eyes that Bucky would have called sorrow if he could think of a single reason why this would make Natasha sad. It passed quickly, but it left something dancing on the edge of his awareness.

  ‘Steve talks about you all the time,’ she continued, and Bucky got the impression that she was trying to hurry past whatever he’d just seen. ‘From what he said, you two were inseparable. Even the war couldn’t keep you apart for long. And that just doesn’t fit with you hiding from him. So either Steve’s been exaggerating…’ She paused, almost as if she were afraid to finish the thought. ‘Or you're not that Bucky anymore.’

  Bucky swallowed against his suddenly dry throat. He could see the truth of her words in the memories. That feeling, that loyalty, was ingrained in every image he had of Steve’s face. He remembered it, but he didn’t feel it any more.

  It was disorientating, being able to hold his past and present emotions side by side. He didn't know which was real. He didn't know which was his.

  He didn't know who he was.

  Natasha was watching him, a gentle question in her eyes. Bucky realised she was waiting for him to confirm her theory. He tried to pull together the words to explain what was happening in his mind, but they didn’t exist. Instead he simply nodded.

  Natasha nodded back, almost involuntarily, and Bucky was overwhelmed by the sense that she knew exactly what he was feeling. Of course, that wasn’t possible.

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ she said, almost whispered. Her eyes were downcast, and she kept them fixed on the floor as she continued. ‘Steve wouldn’t understand that, though. He’d keep trying to get you back – the old you.’

  ‘So you’re trying to help Steve?’ That was the logical conclusion to be drawn from her words, but everything in Natasha’s behaviour contradicted it.

  Her eyes remained trained on the ground.

  ‘Because I don't think he'd consider you making decisions for him “help”.’ Bucky wasn't quite sure where the conviction came from; it arose from the myriad of memories, but he couldn't trace its origin to any one of them.

  ‘He wouldn't,’ Natasha admitted, smiling ruefully. ‘He doesn’t have to be right, though.’

  ‘And you? Do you have to be right?’

  ‘You don’t think I should have come.’ Her voice was lowered; she seemed saddened by the observation. It was a sorrow Bucky couldn’t place. Why should his opinion matter that much to her?

  ‘I still don’t know why you did,’ he replied. That wasn’t true, at least not completely. He knew she wasn’t lying about Steve – she’d meant everything she’d said – but that wasn’t enough to drag her all the way out here. Natasha wanted something more. She wanted something from him. Unfortunately, Bucky had no idea what that could be.

  ‘I told you.’

  Bucky didn’t dignify that with a response. He decided to try waiting again, hopeful that the silence would prompt her to fill in the truth. He anticipated it might take some time, so he let his thoughts drift.

  They settled almost immediately on Steve. Bucky supposed that wasn’t surprising; the unexpected return of those memories had left him with a surplus of information to explore. He watched them play out, hoping they might unlock clues to who he was.

  He wondered if he should meet with Steve, if that would bring back more than combing through these images in his head. But no, even if he managed to uncover more memories, they could only tell him who he had been. Whenever Bucky remembered flashes of his old life it felt like watching through a window. He knew that wasn't him anymore. He remembered the Winter Soldier too. That definitely wasn't him. He just didn't know what he _was._ Was he both of those men? Neither? He wouldn't find the answers in the past.

  He snuck a glance at Natasha and realised that he could end up waiting on her all day at this rate. The prospect did not appeal to him.

  ‘Ask me,’ he said.

  At least she didn’t attempt another blatant lie this time. Still, the silent treatment was starting to wear on Bucky.

  ‘You’re not going to leave without asking, so what’s your plan? Just stay here forever?’ He swiftly quashed the flutter of pleasure that accompanied the words. ‘Ask me,’ he repeated, trying to make his voice more gentle. This wasn’t an interrogation, after all. Still, he felt a desperate need to hear her response. He couldn’t help thinking that this would solve the mystery of that strange sense of kinship he felt for her.

  Natasha still didn’t reply, but Bucky was content to wait this time. Her silence had shifted: now she was considering, carefully formulating her response. Bucky was so intent on her answer he barely noticed how strange it was that he could already read her so exactly.

  'Steve said you pulled him from the river,' she began haltingly. 'Saved his life. Why?'

  'I don't know.' The response was automatic. Bucky did not know if that meant it wasn't true.

  'You must do.’ Her eyes were practically glowing now, intently fixed on him, on her answer. ‘You broke through your programming, that's…'

  'Impossible?'

  The half shake of her head was instinctual, the search for the right word almost painfully considered. 'Incredible. How did you do it?'

  And suddenly it was clear to Bucky. Almost too clear. So obvious, he should have seen it far earlier. If not for the fact that he had truly believed this was impossible. Another like him...

  'How did you?' he replied. If any of his doubts remained they would have been erased by her expression.

  'Slowly,' she said. 'And with help.' The unspoken meaning was perfectly clear. _Not like you._ She wanted to know how Bucky had managed to do what she couldn't. The exhilaration he felt at uncovering her secret fizzled away as he realised that he couldn’t help her. He didn't understand what was going on in his mind right now, let alone how it had managed to get to this point.

  He wasn’t surprised by the sharp sting he felt as he realised he had to disappoint her. He was no longer afraid of the draw he felt to her, not now that he knew she was no threat to him. So he no longer felt the need to deny it to himself.

  'Does it get easier?' He felt a small wash of guilt, giving her his questions in place of her answers. But he couldn’t help asking. 'Can you find your way back to yourself?'

  Natasha bit her lip, rolling it between her teeth as she thought. 'It was different for me. I don’t even know if I _was_ someone before, I was so young. I don’t think you can go back though. But you can... move on. Make yourself something new? I don’t know...’ She trailed off and shook her head, a slight, jerking movement, as if she were trying to shake away the confusion. Bucky understood the feeling. In a way, it was calming, sharing the chaos.

  'Sometimes I don’t know if I want to go back to who I was.' Bucky let the sentence hang in the air for a moment, marvelling at the sound of the words he'd been too afraid to articulate even in his mind. 'Do you think that's wrong?'

  He watched her think, his heart quickening at the flash of understanding that crossed her face. Because if Natasha could understand him, that meant that he was understandable. Something he had never expected to be again.

  'You've changed,' she said. ‘No one could expect you to be the same, to erase what’s happened. It’s only natural...'

  The words were for both of them, Bucky could tell. She still didn’t know the answers, or at least she couldn’t convince herself that they were true. He wondered if that should scare him. If Natasha wasn’t sure of herself, how could he ever hope to be?

  _With her._

  He wasn’t entirely in control of the thought, but he didn’t doubt its truth.

  He moved towards her, not stopping to question the impulse that set him in motion. Strange to think that just minutes ago he had been evaluating her as a threat. Now, he knew that he could never be safer than when he was with her.

  ‘Thank you,’ he whispered. They weren’t all the words he wanted to say, but they were the only ones he could.

  Natasha smiled, flicking her head so that her hair spread around her in a red fan. There was something flippant in the movement, playful. It did nothing to mask the fervour in her eyes.

  ‘Anytime.’

  They were ordinary words, the ones they’d just exchanged. Normally, they would mean less than nothing.

  But not for them. For them they were a promise.

* * *

  He was gone. The air rushed down her throat like it was trying to make up for lost time. As Natasha struggled to raise her shaking body she caught a glimpse of him vanishing up the stairs. He was gone. She collapsed back onto the table, registering the sound of her gasping breath but not caring. He couldn’t be gone, not forever. There had to be a way to get him back. Bucky, her Bucky. He couldn’t be lost. She wouldn’t let him be lost.

  He had to come back to her.

 

 

 


End file.
